Sunday, May 31, 2009

About 55 whales were stranded on a beach near Cape Town on Saturday and high waves were hampering efforts by rescue teams to get them back into the water. Volunteers and marine scientists worked to save the whales shortly after the adults and calves first came ashore in bad weather at 5.30am GMT, said Craig Lambinon, spokesperson for the National Sea Rescue Institute (NSRI).

A month-long poll conducted on business social network LinkedIn has uncovered some fascinating numbers concerning social media platforms and brand presence. The biggest surprise was that Twitter was deemed more important to brands than LinkedIn, and the poll was performed on LinkedIn. With more than 3,600 respondents so far, each well understood in terms of job titles, company size, age and gender - this is a high-quality data set worth paying attention to. The question asked was simply: "What is the most important new platform for brands to master?" Options were Twitter, Facebook, the iPhone, Digg and LinkedIn.

Saturday, May 30, 2009

On October 19, 2008, I wrote an article titled, "A Put on the US Government". I wrote that article because I felt then as I do now; the US bond market is potentially one of the next bubbles to crater. I also believe it's one of the largest bubbles on the planet and carries with it far more concerning consequences for humanity.

On January 6, 2009, I wrote an article titled, "5 predictions for 2009", and in that article I wrote the bond market would go through a topping process and begin to selloff.

Google has released to developers an early version of a collaboration and communication tool that consolidates features from e-mail, instant messaging, blogging, wikis, multimedia management, and document sharing.

Called Wave, the Web application is the equivalent of a Swiss Army Knife for consumer online services and possibly one of the riskiest and most ambitious endeavors Google has embarked upon in years.

In the works for about two years, Wave has the potential to drive people away from popular Google products like Gmail, Google Docs, Google Talk, Picasa, Blogger and Sites, as well as from similar products from competitors like Yahoo, Microsoft and AOL.

Gold prices jumped Friday as the dollar sank to its lowest level in months against the euro and the British pound.

Demand for gold tends to rise when the dollar is weak as investors seek protection against inflation, which can be triggered by a falling greenback.

The dollar has weakened considerably since March as investors move out of cash holdings and into riskier assets like stocks on hopes for an economic recovery. Investors are also worried that the massive amounts of money the government has been pumping into the system could lead to inflation.

That has been a boon for commodities like gold and oil. Oil is priced in dollars, so when the U.S. currency falls, oil becomes cheaper for foreign buyers.

Friday, May 29, 2009

On October 3, as the spreading economic meltdown threatened to topple financial behemoths like American International Group (AIG) and Bank of America and plunged global markets into freefall, the US government responded with the largest bailout in American history. The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, better known as the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), authorized the use of $700 billion to stabilize the nation's failing financial systems and restore the flow of credit in the economy.

The legislation's guidelines for crafting the rescue plan were clear: the TARP should protect home values and consumer savings, help citizens keep their homes and create jobs. Above all, with the government poised to invest hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars in various financial institutions, the legislation urged the bailout's architects to maximize returns to the American people.

Thursday, May 28, 2009

It is no secret that South Africa continues to fall further and further behind the developed on broadband services available, but the question is just how dire the situation has become. A quick look at the latest broadband statistics from the OECD points to a significant gap between South Africa and the OECD countries in terms of broadband penetration rates and broadband service quality.

This should get the alarm bells ringing. In a recent OECD report on the ‘role of communications infrastructure in economic recovery’, the importance of well developed broadband networks is highlighted.

SEACOM today officially announced that the critical portions of the subsea cable and land-based infrastructures have been completed on schedule. These include the branching units and shore-ends necessary to direct the traffic to the landing stations across eastern and southern Africa. All cable landing stations including the terminal equipment have also been completed and are operational.

Testing is now underway and will cover the network’s connections, interfaces and Synchronous Digital Hierarchy systems to ensure that optimum configuration and traffic flow is attained before customers go live. The entire system will be operated and controlled through SEACOM’s Network Operations Centre which is based in Pune, India.

At Google I/O, the company’s developer’s conference being held in San Francisco today and tomorrow, the company is pushing HTML 5 as a standard that can redefine web applications. What the company hopes to do is unleash the power of applications in the web browser itself, just as it’s done with Web apps such as Gmail and Google Maps.

CEO Eric Schmidt kicked off the morning with a 20-minute introduction (Techmeme, Google blog). His overlying message: it’s time. Users are frustrated by the complexity of things that come with the Web, as are developers who are frustrated with plug-ins, different browser support and other things that are beyond their control. And now is the time that companies like Google can advance the technology.

To talk about imminently increasing inflation in the United States today is to meet with policy makers’ derision. The prevailing thinking among mainstream macroeconomists is straightforward on this point — while unemployment is rising, inflation must be low or even falling. If anything, according to Ben Bernanke and his cohort, we should fear deflation, i.e., falling wages and prices, a damaging characteristic of the Great Depression in the 1930s.

But remember, macroeconomic orthodoxy has taken a beating in the past two years. Anyone who claimed subprime mortgages and their ilk could not constitute a macroeconomic threat now has a credibility issue; this includes at least some of our most senior policy thinkers.

I know, I know — it’s a bit presumptuous of me to think I can write the “10 Golden Rules of Social Media.” Then again, I’ve been online since 1987, consulting clients on the Internet since 1992, on the web since 1994, immersed in working on and speaking about the web since the mid-1990s, so I do feel like I’ve paid some dues and learned some lessons along the way.

So here are my 10 Golden Rules of Social Media to embrace, debate, pass around and refine. Have at it.

Long before the current financial crisis, nearly two years ago, a little-noticed cloud darkened the horizon for the US government. It was ignored. But now that shadow, in the form of a warning from a top credit rating agency that the nation risked losing its triple A rating if it did not start putting its finances in order, is coming back to haunt us.

That warning from Moody’s focused on the exploding healthcare and Social Security costs that threaten to engulf the federal government in debt over coming decades. The facts show we’re in even worse shape now, and there are signs that confidence in America’s ability to control its finances is eroding.

Prices have risen on credit default insurance on US government bonds, meaning it costs investors more to protect their investment in Treasury bonds against default than before the crisis hit. It even, briefly, cost more to buy protection on US government debt than on debt issued by McDonald’s. Another warning sign has come from across the Pacific, where the Chinese premier and the head of the People’s Bank of China have expressed concern about America’s longer-term credit worthiness and the value of the dollar.

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Google will hold on Wednesday and Thursday its largest event of the year for external developers, a constituency that it views as critically important for the health of its business and online services.

About 3,500 developers will attend Google I/O at San Francisco's Moscone Center, where speakers from Google and other companies will participate in more than 80 sessions and 100 technical demos.

However, the second annual edition of I/O still finds Google in a weaker position with developers than competitors like Facebook and Microsoft, said Ray Valdes, a Gartner analyst.

The United States government’s strategy for its big banks is now quite clear. These banks have suffered big losses, so they are short on capital and ordinarily you would want them to raise more capital promptly (if this sentence doesn’t make sense to you, start with some “bad bank” basics). But, as we saw in the recently concluded stress tests, the Treasury does not wish to press this point. “Saturday Night Live” provided the hilarious and accurate explanation: The big banks are just too powerful.

Instead, under the guise of “regulatory forbearance” — i.e., the financial regulators’ version of “don’t ask, don’t tell” — banks will be given enough time to earn (and retain) sufficient profits to increase their capital back up to reasonable levels. In the meantime, they will continue to receive a great deal of financial support in the form of credit from the Federal Reserve and debt guarantees from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. This is good for bank stockholders — and great for the people who run these banks — but not necessarily helpful for the economic recovery.

Shortly after she was named to head the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in 1996, Brooksley E. Born was invited to lunch by Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan.

The influential Greenspan was an ardent proponent of unfettered markets. Born was a powerful Washington lawyer with a track record for activist causes. Over lunch, in his private dining room at the stately headquarters of the Fed in Washington, Greenspan probed their differences.

Tuesday, May 26, 2009

This week is a key moment in Google’s life. It is being challenged by a change in the ecosystem. We’ve seen this happen with other companies before. Remember Microsoft in 1994-1996? It responded to the changes in how we exchange information by turning the company hard toward the Internet. Too hard, actually. Bill Gates steered his battleship right into the DOJ’s iceberg. The water it took on from the gash in its side slowed it down for eight years already.

This week Google is having its I/O conference. Executives there told me to be there to witness the shift. They’ve also given me a small look at some of what’s coming. One even told me that it’ll be like the first Microsoft NT developer’s conference in its importance of what gets shown.

Each month, the US Treasury publishes its International Capital account (TIC) which foreign currency traders and bond dealers use to gauge the flows of money from around the world, into and out of the US capital markets. The demand for a nation’s bonds and stocks, combined with international trade flows for goods and services, plus behind the scenes intervention by central banks, all act in concert to influence the foreign exchange market which handles $4 trillion per day.

The release of the TIC report often sparks a flurry of trading activity in the foreign exchange market, due to speculators seeking to earn a fast profit. However, the initial knee-jerk reaction to the news headlines, can be very misleading, and often isn’t long-lasting. For instance, the US Dollar Index, measured against a basket of six currencies, defied conventional logic in February, by climbing +2.7% higher, even in the face of a net outflow of $91 billion in the TIC account.

Monday, May 25, 2009

Nokia on Monday began rolling out its much-anticipated online software and content store, Ovi Store, as it aims to follow the success of Apple's App Store.

Nokia said it had started moving Ovi Store to production servers, preparing for the global commercial launch, and the store was opened to users of a few of its phone models in Australia and Singapore on Monday.

Richard Fisher, president of the Dallas Federal Reserve Bank, said: "Senior officials of the Chinese government grilled me about whether or not we are going to monetise the actions of our legislature."

"I must have been asked about that a hundred times in China. I was asked at every single meeting about our purchases of Treasuries. That seemed to be the principal preoccupation of those that were invested with their surpluses mostly in the United States," he told the Wall Street Journal.

The interest yield on 10-year US Treasuries – the benchmark price of long-term credit for the global system – jumped 33 basis points last week to 3.45pc week on contagion effects after Standard & Poor's issued a warning on Britain's "AAA" credit rating.

The yield has risen over 90 basis points since March when the US Federal Reserve first announced its controversial plan to buy Treasury bonds directly, a move designed to force down the borrowing costs and help stabilise the housing market.

It's not a surprise that social media books are prolific! With many being published faster than new Ashton Kutcher Twitter followers, there has been no definitive Top Ten list published to date. With over 17 million unique Twitter visitors and 100 million registered Facebook users (as of this moment in time), I have selected what I think should make a Top Ten list. And perhaps one day when the NY Times Book Review decides to designate their own list, they will agree with my selections. A Readers' Poll is available for you to vote for your favorite at the end of the blog...

Sunday, May 24, 2009

Intentionally or not, it's a fitting name--"Refusion"--for a winning example of a futuristic homesteading concept based on refusal: refusal to be constrained by established governments or social mores or even by the fundamental desire for solid ground underfoot.

People's-choice award winner in a design competition for "seasteads"--oil rig-like, sovereign settlements in international waters--this proposed research facility by a group of Las Vegas-based 3-D artists includes "a number of environmental systems, such as greenhouses and renewable energy sources, which would enable absolute independence," according to a Team 3DA statement. "The aesthetic that emerged from this realization became influenced by a mixture of organic and mechanical systems operating in a symbiotic relationship."

Britain has been gripped for a fortnight by revelations about MPs’ use of parliamentary allowances. But, this week, the real world interrupted the stream of outbursts, apologies, confessions and crocodile tears. Standard & Poor’s moved the UK’s credit outlook from stable to negative. This, even more than the expenses drama, is an indictment of British politics.

S&P’s verdict is dramatic but, in truth, nothing has changed. The ratings agency is simply another voice in the swelling chorus crying out for a more credible recovery plan; the analysis contained no information that conscientious investors would not already have been eyeing suspiciously. The International Monetary Fund made a similar case earlier in the week.

cases of fraud rise during recessions. This time is no different. According to a report out May 20 from the Network, a U.S. firm that runs compliance and corporate-governance hotlines for about half the Fortune 500, fraud-related calls amounted to 21% of all reports in the first quarter of this year, up from 14% in the same period in 2007. While reports of problems such as harassment, discrimination or health and safety transgressions saw "no appreciable increase," according to Luis Ramos, CEO of the Network, the number of whistle-blowers reporting fraud, theft or the misuse of company assets is "going up dramatically."

It's too early to gauge the extent of corporate fraud triggered by the recent gloom, but with credit scarce and jobs precarious, there's little doubt we're in a boom time for scams. A majority of members of the U.S. Association of Certified Fraud Examiners who were polled in February and March said they had seen the number of company fraud cases climb in the previous 12 months; the bulk of those experts attributed the rise to heavier financial pressure.

Friday, May 22, 2009

In less than a week, the U.S. Dollar Index has dropped by 1.6%. In terms of the sorts of moves the equity markets make, it seems like a miniscule weekly swing. But figure in the absurd change in global wealth when trillions of dollars decline by just a percent or two and the news is much more acute.

As U.K. citizens ponder the economic impact of a possible credit ratings cut, many America citizens are watching the situation very closely. After all, we could be next.

The way the Obama administration has been spending lately and with renewed Treasury-buying interest from the Fed, the global markets have every reason to re-evaluate the value of the American dollar. China must be sweating bullets.

With the rapid, but not-so-surprising drop in the dollar (currently trading for 1.388 euros), it is not surprising to see gold’s price climbing just as rapidly. As I write, the shiny, precious metal is trading for $950 per ounce, very close to the top of its six-month range.

Thursday, May 21, 2009

Gold rose to the highest price since March as a slump in global equity markets increased the appeal of precious metals as an alternative investment. Silver touched the highest since February.

Stocks in Asia, Europe and the U.S. dropped after records showed that Federal Reserve policy makers saw risks last month to a U.S. economic recovery, and some Fed officials said more asset purchases may be needed to secure a stronger economic recovery. Some investors buy gold as a store of value when stocks decline.

“The fact equity markets appear to have stalled and inflation fears are on the increase should give gold increased upward momentum,” James Moore, an analyst at TheBullionDesk.com in London, wrote in a note today.

Statistically, Flock is probably not for you. This Web browser, the 2.5 version of which is coming out today for Windows and Mac, is "designed to be the essential browser for the most active 25 percent of users," Flock CEO Shawn Hardin tells me.

You don't generally see browser makers designing their products to not be used by the majority of Web surfers, but this is typical Flock: it's a browser designed for not just Web surfers, but Web crackheads. So far, 7.5 million people have downloaded the browser, and about 1.1 million actively use it.

Flock's differentiator is the way it integrates other services into the main browser frame. While you can layer in some similar features with Firefox plug-in, in Flock, almost everything you'd want to do on the social Web is already built in. And, as Hardin reminds me, all the social features are developed alongside the browser itself, so integration and performance should be more consistent.

Given the large question mark looming over the global financial markets, it's hardly surprising that there's been a recent infestation of gold bugs. Despite the frequent unveiling of economic stimulus measures throughout the world and equity markets gradually creeping higher, investors' increased interest in buying physical bullion is a testament to gold's appeal as a hedge against currency devaluation. (See "The Basics: Gold.")

"Surging investor demand is powering the gold market," said Citi global commodity strategist Alan Heap. "The market is expected to remain robust as long as economic and financial risks remain paramount. But it's a crowded trade and fundamentals are not supportive."

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

All those brands trying to figure the ROI of Twitter? They might do well to follow the lead of the local pizza joint.

Naked Pizza, a New Orleans healthful-pizza shop that's hoping to go national -- Mark Cuban is a backer -- has been marketing itself via the microblogging service. And recently it has started to track Twitter-spurred sales at the register. In a test run April 23, an exclusive-to-Twitter promotion brought in 15% of the day's business.

"Every phone call was tracked, every order was measured by where it came from, and it told us very quickly that Twitter is useful," said Jeff Leach, the restaurant's co-founder. "Sure, there's the brand marketing and getting-to-know-you stuff. ... But we wanted to know: Can it make the cash register ring?"